Wash Your Mouth out with SOPA

The role of the Internet in the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East has been discussed ad nauseam by this point. Analysis of the events has focused on how the popular social networking websites had a role in helping protesters organize in the early stages of the mass uprisings, though there have been arguments to downplay such a perspective. And it is true, there may be a tendency to overemphasize how important the Internet actually was in these revolts. To continue to debate that point would be to dwell on counterfactuals to such a great degree that it is unlikely to yield anything substantial.

But what can be examined is the way the Internet is working within different contexts and how issues centrally focused on the Internet are becoming increasingly volatile. Perhaps the most obvious, and most important, example of this has been the reaction to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA). On January 18th, for those of you who think your convection oven is a computer, Wikipedia, Reddit, and several other websites went dark. Google used the might of their all-powerful doodle to further draw attention to the opposition to these two pieces of legislation. Leading up to the January 18th blackout, members of Reddit were buzzing about the possibility of an "Internet strike" and when it came to fruition, it appeared that the major media outlets refocused on the issues inherent into these two pieces of legislation.

I want to have full disclosure here: I think SOPA and PIPA are horrible bills written by people who are either completely ignorant of the way the Internet actually functions or are too busy to care to craft a more articulate bill. The bills, as they stand, would open the door to a massive amount of litigation and needless crack downs on various websites.

What I want to really consider, however, is not the shortcomings of the bills, but how the opposition to these bills played out. The discourse around the bills was framed as an issue of free speech and personal freedom. The notion that any website could be brought down because a wayward link to material claimed under copyright certainly raises grave concerns regarding the nature of execution and enforcement. To frame the issue in terms of free speech, however, is certainly curious to some degree. The bills were not designed to silence political opposition or the ability for individuals to voice their opinions- they were designed to clamp down on the distribution of materials which were still claimed under active copyright. I suspect that what was being claimed was that because any website could be shut down under the laws, regular users were exposed to an unfair danger of losing their ability to upload content or share messages. This is where the bills were really at their weakest; in an effort to pursue illegal behavior, too many individuals were opened up to the consequences of enforcement. I don't see any concerted effort on the part of lawmakers to infringe on the first amendment. I do see a remarkable degree of negligence on the part of lawmakers which exposed too many people to an unnecessary response on the part of enforcement agencies.

The mobilization of online communities, however, is at risk of being overstated though not by much. Certainly, the very fact that Internet giants Wikipedia and Google stood in opposition to SOPA certainly added a tremendous amount of weight to the opposition. The question to ask is whether or not legislators were actually moved by the vocal online community, or it they only caved because powerful business interests made a very serious statement about the bills. We return once more to the perennial question in America; who are our legislator's real constituents? Its a fairly trite question by this point, but one that must be asked by anyone who's experiencing too much euphoria over the bills' current shelving. Where the role of the Internet and social networking in the revolutions abroad can remain a point of contention and debate, we may want to look a little closer for an answer to what the Internet can do for social movements and their impacts on governments.

While I am elated that there is at least a temporary victory for people wanting to avoid poor legislation over the critical infrastructure that is the Internet, I am also skeptical that the average Internet user had much more of a role than simply being consumers. The issue is, if it was in fact the business interests that impact the legislative process, what was really was accomplished was a reaffirmation of our roles as interchangeable consumers. And the problem with that is that the business, not the consumer, gets to speak to the government. We are constantly one level removed from where our impacts should really be placed. Perhaps I am being too cynical here. Perhaps the signing of petitions and vocal opposition really did have a significant impact. But this is something experts in the field should really question now, before we start thinking the Internet will be a way to save our democracy.